Characters

• Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE): The central male character, a pub owner in Dublin who is haunted by a mysterious sin or transgression. He represents fallen man and cycles through various historical and mythological identities.
• Anna Livia Plurabelle (ALP): HCE's wife, who is closely associated with the River Liffey. She tries to defend her husband and writes a letter that becomes a central mystery of the novel.
• Shem the Penman: One of HCE and ALP's twin sons. He is a writer and artist figure, often interpreted as a stand-in for Joyce himself.
• Shaun the Postman: Shem's twin brother and rival. He is more conventional and socially accepted than Shem.
• Issy: The young daughter of HCE and ALP. She has a split personality and is an object of desire for multiple characters.
• Kate: The Earwickers' cleaning woman, who also serves as a museum curator figure in parts of the novel.
• Joe: The Earwickers' handyman and barman.
• The Four Old Men: Also known as “Mamalujo," these figures act as narrators and judges throughout the novel. They represent the Four Evangelists and the four provinces of Ireland.
• The Twelve Customers: A group of pub patrons who gossip about HCE and act as jurors in his imagined trial.

Quick facts

• James Joyce devoted 17 years, from 1922 to 1939, to writing Finnegans Wake.
• The book's title comes from an Irish ballad called “Finnegan's Wake” about a man who rises from the dead.
• Finnegans Wake contains words from more than 60 different languages.
• The book is written in a unique stream-of-consciousness style meant to mimic the language of dreams and the unconscious mind.
• Joyce was nearly blind while writing much of the novel and dictated portions to assistants.
• Finnegans Wake contains ten 100-letter words, known as “thunderwords,” spread throughout the text.
• Finnegans Wake begins mid-sentence and ends mid-sentence, forming a complete cyclical narrative.
Joyce claimed he could justify every word choice in the highly complex text.
• The book was initially published in fragments under the title “Work in Progress” before its full release in 1939.
The novel has inspired notable musical interpretations, including John Cage's 1979 composition, “Roaratorio.”
• Scholars and critics have called Finnegans Wake both a modern literary masterpiece and the most difficult work of fiction ever written in English.

About the author

James Joyce (1882-1941) was an influential Irish novelist and poet. His most famous works include the short story collection Dubliners (1914), the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), his landmark novel Ulysses (1922), which chronicles a single day in Dublin through stream-of-consciousness narrative and literary allusions, and his final novel Finnegans Wake (1939), which pushed experimental prose to new extremes with its complex wordplay and dream-like structure. Credited with innovative literary techniques such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and dense allusions, he is considered a trailblazer in modernist literature.

Born and raised in Dublin, Joyce left Ireland as a young man and spent most of his life abroad in cities such as Trieste, Paris, and Zurich. Despite his self-imposed exile, Dublin remained the setting and inspiration for much of his work. His writing often focused on the details of everyday Dublin life while exploring themes of Irish identity, Catholicism, and the human psyche. Though some of his works faced censorship for their sexual content, Joyce gained critical acclaim in his lifetime.

Joyce suffered from recurrent eye problems throughout his life that left him nearly blind by his later years. He died in Zurich at the age of 58. His life and works continue to be the subject of extensive scholarly analysis and popular interest.